Hide joins, parts, and quits

Method 1

In order to ignore showing of joining,leaving,quiting of users for all channels type the following in irssi:

/ignore * joins
/ignore * parts
/ignore * quits
/save

Method 2

Alternatively, the same can be accomplished by editing the ~/.irssi/conf file thus

#
ignores = ( { level = "JOINS PARTS QUITS"; } );

Basic usage

Note: This section assumes you already know the basics of IRC and have used other clients in the past. For a more detailed introduction check the official documentation.

To start irssi issue the following command in a terminal:

$ irssi

Many people prefer to run irssi within a terminal multiplexer since some scripts like the nicklist.pl script are dependent on a secondary window. Additionally, it allows the user to easily disconnect and reconnect to a session. Therefore, it is recommended that you select a multiplexer (e.g. GNU Screen or tmux) and review how it functions.

Commands

Connection

/server

/s

These change the server of the current network.

/connect

/c

These open a new connection to a server. This is what you want to use in order to connect to multiple servers simultaneously (Ctrl+X switches between multiple servers).

/disconnect

/dc

These close the current connection to a server.

Movement

ALT+(1-0,q-p,etc)

Changes the currently active window. Or use Ctrl+n for the next window or Ctrl+p for the previous window.

/window 1

/w 1

Takes you to the first window. Windows go from are numbered across the top of your keyboard (1-0) and then start on the next row down (q-p).

/window close

/wc

These close the current window.

/window move 1

/w move 1

These move the current window to the first window position.

/layout save

This will save the current window positions for the next time you start irssi.

Miscellaneous

/set

This shows a list of all your current settings.

/help

This provides a helpful description/explanation for whatever parameter provided.

/alias

Lets you create your own shortcuts.

Script installation

As an example, this section will outline the installation of a spell checking script.

irssi should then alter its config file correspondingly; if the proxy is not required, just set use_proxy to OFF.

Should the proxy require a password, try:

/SET proxy_password your_pass

Otherwise:

/SET -clear proxy_password

Note: SSL behind a proxy will fail with these settings.

irssi with nicklist in tmux

The irssi plugin 'nicklist' offers to add a pane listing the users on the channel currently viewed. It has two methods to do this:

screen, which simply adds the list to the right of irssi, but brings the disadvantage that the entire window gets redrawn every time irssi prints a line.

fifo, which like the name suggests writes the list into a fifo that can then be continuously read with e. g. cat ~/.irssi/nicklistfifo.

nicklist will use the more efficient fifo with:

/NICKLIST FIFO

This fifo can be used in a tmux window split vertically with irssi in its left pane and the cat from above in a small one in its right. Since the pane is dependent on its creating tmux session's geometry, a subsequent session with a different one needs to recreate it (which also implies a switch in irssi windows to refill the fifo).

E. g., the following script first checks for a running irssi, presumed to have been run by a previous execution of itself. Unless found it creates a new tmux session, a window named after and running irssi and then the pane with cat. If however irssi was found it merely attaches to the session and recreates the cat pane.

Virtual hostname (vhost)

A vhost can be used to change your hostname when connected to an IRC-server, commonly viewed when joining/parting or doing a whois. This is most commonly done on a server which have a static IP address. Without a vhost it would commonly look like so when doing a 'whois':

nick@123.456.78.90.isp.com

The result of a successfull vhost could be like so if you have the domain example.com available:

nick@example.com

Keep in mind that not every IRC-server supports the use of vhost. This might be individually set between the servers and not the network, so if you're experiencing issues with one server try another on the same network.

Required preconfigurations

irssi supports using a vhost as long as the required configurations has been set. This includes especially that your host supports Recursive DNS Lookup (rDNS) using Pointer record (PTR). Additionally you should add an appropriate line to your /etc/hosts file.

To see if this is working, test with the 'host' DNS lookup utility included in dnsutils like so (where ip is a normal IPv4 address):

host ip

If this returns something in the lines of this then you know that your rDNS is working.

ip.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer example.com

Enabling the vhost

There are a couple of ways to connect to a server with a given hostname. One is using the 'server' command with a -host argument like so:

/server -host example.com irc.freenode.org

Another way would be to set your hostname (vhost) with the 'set' command which will save your hostname to ~/.irssi/config: